# Rifts

Kevin Siembieda's gonzo post-apocalyptic science fantasy from Palladium Books. On a future Earth torn open by dimensional Rifts, players are Glitter Boys, Juicers, Cyber-Knights, Ley Line Walkers, Techno-Wizards, psychics and dragons. The current core is Rifts Ultimate Edition (2005), backed by decades of compatible world books.

## At a Glance

Gonzo post-apocalyptic science fantasy • Palladium Megaversal system, class and level • Rifts Ultimate Edition core, 376 pages • Mega-Damage, ley-line magic, psionics and bionics • Decades of compatible world books

## Why It Fits

Choose Rifts when your group wants the biggest possible sandbox: power armor, cyborgs, dragons, magic and psionics in one party, on a future Earth where any continent or dimension can be next. It suits a GM who enjoys curating books, approving characters and keeping a house-rule list, and players who like long character creation with lots of choices. Look elsewhere if you need balanced classes, quick setup or clean modern rules; Rifts for Savage Worlds offers the same world on faster rules.

## Fit Facts

- Prep: High
- Price: Paid

## Facets

- Genres: Post-Apocalyptic, Science Fantasy, Science Fiction
- Mechanics: Campaign, Character Customization, Class-Based, Rules Heavy, Skill-Based

## Scores

- Complexity: 5/5
- New GM Fit: 1/5
- Roleplay Focus: 3/5
- Combat Focus: 4/5
- Tactical Depth: 3/5
- Campaign Depth: 5/5

## Best For

- Groups who want a huge science-fantasy sandbox with power armor, cyborgs, magic, psionics and dragons in one party
- GMs who enjoy curating sourcebooks, approving characters and running house rules
- Long campaigns that travel across continents and into other dimensions

## Avoid If

- You want balanced classes and a clean, modern rulebook
- You need fast character creation or quick one-shots
- You want official VTT support or a free quickstart

## Explorer Notes

Rifts is the original Palladium Books TTRPG of power armor, cyborgs, dragons, ley-line magic and dimensional monsters on a shattered future Earth. It is best for groups who want a huge, gonzo kitchen-sink setting with decades of sourcebooks behind it, who enjoy building characters from long lists of classes, skills, bionics and gear, and who are happy to house-rule an old-school system to fit their table. It is not for groups that want tight balance, quick character creation, or a modern, cleanly organized rulebook.

The current core book is [Rifts Ultimate Edition](https://palladiumbooks.com/shop/futuristic/rifts-rpg/rifts-core-books/rifts-ultimate-edition/). This page covers Palladium's own game and its Megaversal rules. If you want the same world on faster, more modern rules, see [Rifts for Savage Worlds](/item/rifts-for-savage-worlds), Pinnacle's licensed adaptation, which needs the Savage Worlds core.

## What the game is

Rifts was created by Kevin Siembieda and published by [Palladium Books](https://palladiumbooks.com/) in August 1990. It is set hundreds of years after a cataclysm in which a golden age of human technology collapsed, the planet's ley lines erupted with magic, and tears in space and time (the Rifts) began pouring creatures, aliens and whole cultures onto Earth. By the default timeline, humanity is a minority on its own world, sharing it with Dimensional Beings (D-Bees), supernatural predators and returned legends such as Atlantis.

The default play area is North America. The fascist, human-supremacist Coalition States rule from the fortress-city of Chi-Town and wage war on magic and nonhumans; independent kingdoms such as Lazlo welcome magic users and D-Bees; mercenary companies, frontier towns and wilderness scouts fill the gaps. Characters are adventurers, mercenaries, scholars, freedom fighters or monster hunters moving through that conflict.

The appeal is scale and variety. In one party you might find a Glitter Boy in laser-reflecting power armor, a chemically boosted Juicer with a few years to live, a Ley Line Walker spellcaster, a psychic Mind Melter, a Dog Boy (a mutant dog bred by the Coalition to sniff out magic and the supernatural) and a hatchling dragon. The game describes itself as an advanced TTRPG rather than an introduction to the hobby.

## Publication history and editions

The 1990 core book, with Keith Parkinson's cover of an Atlantean slave barge, was an immediate hit; Wikipedia's history quotes John Kovalic calling it "the runaway success of 1990". Palladium supported it with a long run of World Books, Dimension Books, Sourcebooks and Conversion Books through the 1990s and 2000s, and the line has never been rebooted.

Rifts Ultimate Edition (RUE) followed in August 2005. Palladium describes it as "not exactly a Second Edition": most rules are unchanged, but the text is rewritten and reorganized, several O.C.C.s are expanded or revised (Headhunter, Techno-Wizard, Shifter and others), a few new classes are added, and the world information is updated to the period after the Coalition's war on Tolkeen. Because the rules did not change dramatically, Palladium says its 40-plus earlier sourcebooks remain usable.

For the 30th anniversary, Palladium released an "Original" Rifts commemorative hardcover (288 pages, $49.99 at the April 2023 listing) that reprints the first-edition rules with the Parkinson cover, a history of the line and a gallery of covers. It is a collector's edition rather than a new rules set; for a new group, RUE is the book to start with.

## What you need to play

- Rifts Ultimate Edition is the only required book. The 376-page core has about 30 Occupational and Racial Character Classes, skills, magic, psionics, bionics, Mega-Damage gear, setting chapters and character sheets. Palladium sells it in hardcover and in a newer perfect-bound softcover ($39.99 at the time of research). A PDF is on [DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/181928/rifts-ultimate-edition-rpg?affiliate_id=1659151) ($28.49 as checked on October 30, 2026; listed at $46.99).

- Rifts Game Master Guide (352 pages) collects weapons, vehicles, skills and rules clarifications from earlier books in one place. Many GMs treat it as the second essential purchase.

- Rifts Book of Magic (352 pages) compiles the spells and magic systems scattered across the line, which matters if a player wants to play a spellcaster beyond the core options.

- Rifts Adventure Guide (192 pages) gives advice and tools for building adventures and running groups that may include very different power levels.

Nothing official works as a free quickstart for the Palladium rules, so groups usually learn from the core book or from an experienced GM.

## Major sourcebooks and world books

The line's size is a selling point and a barrier. World Books take the game around the planet: Vampire Kingdoms (Mexico), Atlantis, England, Africa, Triax and the NGR (Germany), South America, Underseas, Japan, Lone Star, New West, Spirit West, Federation of Magic, Russia, Australia, Canada, China, Lemuria and Northern Gun, among others. The Coalition Wars series covers the siege of Tolkeen, and the Chi-Town 'Burbs books add an urban campaign base. Dimension Books such as Phase World and the Three Galaxies take Rifts into space opera, and the Conversion Books bring in creatures and classes from Palladium's other games.

Players often add Merc Ops or Juicer Uprising for equipment, and Wikipedia's list of releases runs to dozens of titles through Rifts Titan Robotics (2023). You do not need them to start, but most long campaigns pick up a few that match where the party travels.

## Current line and community

Palladium still publishes Rifts and runs a regular weekly update on its site. Its [October 22, 2026 update](https://palladiumbooks.com/news/weekly-updates/rifts-glitter-boy-codex-funded-in-2-hours-surprise-packages-coming-soon-weekly-update/) reports that the Rifts Glitter Boy Codex crowdfunder launched on BackerKit on October 20, funded in under two hours, and runs through November 20, 2026. The 128-page sourcebook is announced as the first full-color Rifts book, alongside Rifts dice, a new customizable GM screen and a full-color Mechanoids Redux collection, and Pinnacle says a Savage Rifts conversion document will come with it. Palladium's summer 2026 updates also list Rifts Bestiary Volume Two, Rifts Antarctica and Rifts Chaos Earth: First Responders as books in the works. Treat those as announced, not released.

The community is long-lived and opinionated. Palladium's own forums, the r/Rifts subreddit and fan sites trade house rules, conversions and campaign logs, and The Rifter, Palladium's long-running sourcebook series, collects fan and official material.

## Digital tools and VTT support

There is no official VTT module or compendium for Palladium's Rifts. On Roll20, the community "Palladium Rifts" sheet (released in 2021) tracks attacks per melee and supports profiles for power armor or spell effects, but players enter all of their own data. Some groups use Foundry with a generic sheet system, and many simply play theater of the mind over voice chat. If official VTT content matters to you, the Savage Worlds version has official Foundry modules; the Palladium game does not.

## Core rules and play structure

Rifts runs on Palladium's Megaversal system, shared with games such as Heroes Unlimited, Palladium Fantasy and Beyond the Supernatural. It is a class-and-level game with several sub-systems rather than one unified mechanic:

- Attributes are eight scores (I.Q., M.E., M.A., P.S., P.P., P.E., P.B. and Spd) that grant bonuses at high values.

- Skills are percentiles. Each skill has a base chance that grows with level, and you roll under it on d100.

- Combat uses a d20. Characters get a number of attacks per melee round; attackers roll to strike, and defenders can spend actions to parry or dodge by rolling higher. Initiative, rolls with impact and called shots add detail.

- Damage is tracked on two scales. Ordinary hit points and Structural Damage Capacity (S.D.C.) cover people and normal objects, while Mega-Damage (M.D.) covers power armor, vehicles, dragons and energy weapons. One point of M.D. equals 100 S.D.C., so an unarmored human hit by a Mega-Damage weapon is usually dead.

- Magic uses Potential Psychic Energy (P.P.E.), and psionics uses Inner Strength Points (I.S.P.). Ley lines and nexus points boost both.

A typical session mixes travel across dangerous wilderness, mercenary jobs or rescue missions, encounters with D-Bees and Coalition patrols, and large, loud fights that can level a town if nobody is careful.

## Characters, classes and advancement

Characters are built around an O.C.C. (Occupational Character Class) or R.C.C. (Racial Character Class). The core book groups them into Men of Arms (Cyber-Knights, Glitter Boys, Juicers, Crazies, Headhunters, cyborgs and Coalition soldiers), Adventurers and Scholars (Rogue Scientists, Operators, City Rats, Wilderness Scouts), Practitioners of Magic (Ley Line Walkers, Shifters, Mystics, Techno-Wizards) and Racial classes (Dog Boys, Psi-Stalkers, Bursters, Mind Melters and dragon hatchlings). Each class sets skills, starting gear, special abilities and its own experience table, and characters climb levels by earning experience points for clever play and survival as well as combat.

Characters also choose an alignment from Palladium's seven-step scale, from Principled to Diabolic, which describes behavior in concrete terms. Character creation takes time: rolling attributes, picking O.C.C. and elective skills, calculating bonuses and buying or assigning gear is a session in itself for new players.

## Signature mechanics

- Mega-Damage. The two damage scales let a laser pistol, a dragon and a giant robot all make sense in one fight, and they make ordinary weapons and unarmored bodies almost irrelevant once M.D. enters play.

- Classes with built-in costs. Juicers trade a short life for superhuman speed, Crazies risk insanity from brain implants, and heavy cybernetics erode humanity. Power often arrives with a story hook attached.

- Ley lines and Techno-Wizardry. Magic grows stronger near ley lines and nexus points, which makes geography matter, and Techno-Wizards build magic-powered guns and vehicles that blur the line between spell and machine.

- The Megaverse. Because every Palladium game sits in one multiverse, a GM can pull monsters, classes or whole settings in through a Rift, and the Conversion Books give the rules to do it.

## What play feels like

At its best, Rifts feels like a pile of 1980s and 1990s action toys dumped on the floor: power armor next to a Cyber-Knight next to a dragon, all fighting demons or Coalition Skull Walkers on the ruins of a city. Historian Stu Horvath summed it up as the TTRPG that answers the comic-shop question "who would win?" Sessions swing between travel, investigation of strange Rift phenomena, mercenary politics and big set-piece battles.

The rough edges show in combat. With several attacks per melee per character, parries and dodges, and two damage scales, fights can be long and bookkeeping-heavy, especially when one player has a 400-M.D.C. power armor suit and another has a spellcaster with a handful of P.P.E. Many tables keep things moving by playing theater of the mind and agreeing on house rules early.

## Running the game

Rifts asks a lot of its Game Master. Prep is high: you need to know where the campaign is set, which books are in play, and which classes and gear are allowed. Power balance is the biggest job. Some O.C.C.s and R.C.C.s are far stronger than others, and newer books often add stronger equipment, so many GMs approve every character and limit the books players can draw from. The rules are spread across the core book, the Game Master Guide and older world books, and they sometimes contradict each other, so GMs end up making rulings and keeping a house-rule list.

The payoff is that the setting gives you almost endless hooks: a Coalition patrol, a Rift opening at a nexus, a Splugorth slaving raid, a frontier town hiring mercenaries, or a jump to another continent or dimension.

## Campaign fit

Rifts is a campaign game. Long character creation, level-based growth and the breadth of the setting reward months of play, and the world books are written to support travel from region to region. It is a poor fit for drop-in one-shots unless the GM prepares pregenerated characters and a contained scenario. Groups that want to visit many genres in one campaign, from post-apocalyptic wilderness to space opera to mythic realms, will get the most from it.

## Reception and legacy

Early reviews praised the setting and doubted the rules. In Challenge #48, Lester W. Smith liked the magic system and recommended the game for its setting, but criticized the lack of an introductory adventure and the badly organized rules. Josh Timbrook rated it 4 out of 5 in White Wolf #26 (1991). Readers of the UK magazine Arcane ranked it 22nd among the top 50 TTRPGs of all time in 1996, and Black Gate's Scott Taylor placed it ninth in a 2013 all-time top ten. Wikipedia notes that critics have long faulted the power creep in its supplements.

Today the same split holds. On DriveThruRPG, the Ultimate Edition PDF averaged 4.6 from 44 ratings with 7 written reviews and a platinum best-seller badge when checked on October 30, 2026. In community threads, fans praise the world, the art and the freedom to play almost anything, while critics call the Palladium rules dated, clunky and poorly balanced; some groups keep the setting and play it with Savage Worlds or another system. No major industry award for the game was verified.

## Where it is strongest

- A huge, distinctive science-fantasy setting with three decades of compatible sourcebooks.

- Iconic character concepts (Glitter Boys, Juicers, Techno-Wizards, Dog Boys, dragons) that players remember for years.

- Room for any campaign: military, mercenary, exploration, horror, political, or interdimensional.

- A publisher still releasing new books and running crowdfunders in 2026.

## Where it can frustrate groups

- Rules are spread across several books, unevenly organized, and sometimes contradictory.

- Power levels between classes vary widely, and newer books tend to escalate them.

- Character creation and combat bookkeeping are slow compared with modern games.

- The PDF is a scanned image file, and there is no official VTT support.

## Content and safety notes

The setting includes genocidal, human-supremacist governments, slavery, demons and vampires, body modification with tragic costs, and drug-fueled super-soldiers. Violence is lethal and large-scale. Most of it is pulp rather than graphic, but tables should agree in advance how much they want to engage with the Coalition's atrocities and the slave markets of Atlantis.

## Best starting path

- Pick up [Rifts Ultimate Edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/181928/rifts-ultimate-edition-rpg?affiliate_id=1659151) in PDF or print from [Palladium Books](https://palladiumbooks.com/shop/futuristic/rifts-rpg/rifts-core-books/rifts-ultimate-edition/).

- Start in North America with a small region, a limited set of O.C.C.s and a clear mercenary or frontier premise, and agree on house rules for combat and power level before play.

- Add the Game Master Guide next, then world books only for the places your campaign actually visits.

- If the Palladium rules are a deal-breaker, compare [Rifts for Savage Worlds](/item/rifts-for-savage-worlds) for the same world on lighter rules.

## Research notes

Last checked October 30, 2026. Sources:

- [Palladium Books: Rifts Ultimate Edition product page](https://palladiumbooks.com/shop/futuristic/rifts-rpg/rifts-core-books/rifts-ultimate-edition/) (formats, page count, edition notes, class list)

- [DriveThruRPG: Rifts Ultimate Edition RPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/181928/rifts-ultimate-edition-rpg?affiliate_id=1659151) (price, 384-page scanned PDF, ratings)

- [Palladium weekly update, April 13, 2023](https://palladiumbooks.com/news/weekly-updates/about-palladium-2-weekly-updates-1314-palladium-books-weekly-update-april-13-2023/) (30th Anniversary hardcover, core book formats and page counts)

- [Palladium weekly update, August 20, 2026](https://palladiumbooks.com/news/weekly-updates/be-excited-weekly-update-august-20-2026/) and [September 10, 2026](https://palladiumbooks.com/news/weekly-updates/news-palladium-books-weekly-update-sept-10-2026/) (books in the works)

- [Palladium weekly update, October 22, 2026](https://palladiumbooks.com/news/weekly-updates/rifts-glitter-boy-codex-funded-in-2-hours-surprise-packages-coming-soon-weekly-update/) (Glitter Boy Codex crowdfunder)

- [Pinnacle Entertainment Group: Glitter Boy Codex on BackerKit](https://shop.peginc.com/blogs/news/now-on-backerkit-the-glitter-boy-codex-for-rifts%c2%ae) (Savage Rifts conversion document)

- [Wikipedia: Rifts (role-playing game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifts_(role-playing_game%29) (history, setting, rules overview, supplement list, reception)

- [Dicegazers: Guide to Palladium Rifts](https://dicegazers.com/guide-to-palladium-rifts/) (what to buy, house rules, pros and cons)

- [r/rpg: Do people still play Rifts?](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/iwdn4s/do_people_still_play_rifts/) and [r/osr: Has anyone here ever played Rifts?](https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/10qlh9j/has_anyone_here_ever_played_rifts_i_remember/) (community sentiment)

- [r/Rifts: Most compatible VTT for Rifts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Rifts/comments/1f112tm/whats_the_most_compatible_vtt_out_there_to_run/) and [Palladium forums: Roll20 Rifts character sheet](https://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=177522) (VTT support)

## Links

- Explorer page: https://www.ttrpg-games.com/item/rifts
- Agent JSON: https://www.ttrpg-games.com/api/games/rifts.json
- Publisher or official site: https://palladiumbooks.com/shop/futuristic/rifts-rpg/rifts-core-books/rifts-ultimate-edition/
- Reviews or retailer page: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/181928/rifts-ultimate-edition-rpg?affiliate_id=1659151